


My Heart Out There

by Northisnotup



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cat and Mouse, Gen, Lead them on a merry chase, M/M, Other, Peter Nureyev Alias Generator (Penumbra Podcast), To the Tune of Carmen Sandiago, Where in the world is Peter Nureyev, Working title: where's waldo if waldo was a master thief, alternate s3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24105460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northisnotup/pseuds/Northisnotup
Summary: A birthday present for the endlessly wonderful @stubborn_jerkIn a world where Peter Nureyev was not waiting posed across the hood of the RUBY7, knees up, popped booty.Juno's not letting this be the end of them.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 13
Kudos: 122





	My Heart Out There

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stubborn_jerk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stubborn_jerk/gifts).



> The working title for this fic was 'Where's Waldo, If Waldo Was a Master Thief' 
> 
> SJ - I know you said you wanted some Rita and Juno bonding and to be fair there IS some of that in here. But this idea gripped me and would not let go. SO. I hope you like it. 
> 
> As always, thanks for handholding and beta work goes to Rox. Who is just excellent at kicking my ass into gear.

“Out with it Steel!” Vespa snarled, pacing back and forth behind Buddy’s chair like a caged animal.

“I don’t see why I have to explain myself to you!” Juno snapped back, mouth moving before his brain could interject.

“You’re planning something! You spend all your time holed up in your room, chasing a ghost!”

“He is not a ghost!” 

He wasn’t. 

He couldn’t be.

It took Juno longer than he’s proud of to accept that Peter Nureyev’s name was a gift, and one not lightly given. Bedridden after Newtown and mind leaking out his ears, he had Rita guide him through firewalls and redacted files to finally confirm what he saw first hand. 

Peter Nureyev - a name attached to red flags in every security system in the Outer Rim. But also one so heavily redacted that ‘Nureyev,’ as a family name, went from being one of the most common on Brahma to being rare enough to set off those flags and all within a five year period.

New Kinshasa still floated, but the Guardian Angel System had been shut down after ‘major security flaws were found in its operation.’ A revolution flourished on Brahma, even though the name Nureyev was nowhere to be found. 

“Oh, you’re so sure of that are you? Exactly what side are you playing, Steel? Thief, law-man, con man?”

“So what, a guy can’t scope out the competition?” Juno said, knowing as he said it that it’s the wrong thing to say.

Vespa...well, he couldn’t make heads or tails of _what_ Vespa’s game was. Looking at her was uncomfortable, like looking in a mirror that’s cracked and warped over time. Vespa was harsh, defensive, and openly hostile to anyone who her paranoia thought could betray her. Which, besides Buddy, was everybody. Maybe it was unfair to say Juno saw his worst self living inside of her skin. Maybe it was unfair to snap and yell and point out her deficiencies because it was just like pointing out his own. Maybe it was unfair to say that their similarities were what made him fight to be kind to her.

Vespa whirled, finger pointing at his chest, “How would you know he’s competition unless you know-”

“Vespa, dear,” Buddy finally cut in. “I’m sure Juno has good reason for hunting our former ally.”

Juno sputtered, mind and mouth both sticking on Buddy’s particular choice of words.

“If he’s doing that much research on Ransom, if he’s found that much information on a nobody, how can we be sure we can trust him, Bud?” Vespa eyed him in that way Juno’s become very familiar with over the months-long course of their association. The kind of look that said she would knife him gladly if only Buddy said she could.

“Hey!”

Buddy smiled, and Juno grit his teeth against demanding to know if she’d been holding out on him, playing him for a fool that whole time. But she wasn’t taunting him with that smile. She wasn’t happy he’d been twisting in the wind, chasing every scrap of information he could get his hands on with what little he could feed Rita while still keeping the core of Peter Nureyev held secret and close to his heart. 

No. 

With Buddy, the smile was her satisfaction at being the center of attention, where she belonged. Buddy Aurinko wasn’t just a ringleader, she was a circus act in her own right and she liked everyone to know it.

“Juno, if you remember, your name was on a very long list of potential employee’s for me. Well, beyond that list perhaps not being quite as long as I may have implied, I am more than a little surprised you never questioned why it was there in the first place.”

“You mentioned two of my former employers, both of ‘em crooks,” Juno started, but lost steam halfway through that line of reasoning. For Vicky, his draw was his reputation and veneer of respectability. He had his own business, after all, and he was known as a bit of a fuck up, but an honest one. Then Ramses...Ramses never saw himself as a crook at all. And beyond that, he’d been possessive of Juno’s supposed ‘goodness,’ his morality. He wouldn’t have passed Juno’s name along to anyone in the Cerberus province. “Who gave you my name?”

“He called himself Peter Ransom, for our meeting,” Buddy said and though she seemed to be gearing up for a dramatic narration, Juno interrupted her by trying to claw back the air that just left his lungs. “Someone walk on your grave, darling? I can only assume you’re familiar with that moniker.”

“Ransom, that was the name he gave you? You’re sure?” Juno rasped. 

Buddy slid over the drink she’d been leisurely sipping and Juno took a healthy swing. It burned down his throat and warmed his stomach, even as the taste made him wince. Buddy preferred liquor you’re meant to take your time with.

“I am. Names are funny things for thieves. They are both the most important thing we have and our greatest vulnerability. As you found at the Lighthouse, everyone knows Buddy Aurinko. She has a reputation that tells other thieves just what she is willing to do, for how much and a history that proves she is worth it. Peter Ransom...does not.” 

“Though all talent has its own unique calling card, when a thief wears a different name for every heist it speaks to something in their character. An unwillingness to play by the rules which we govern ourselves. A lack of trust. However, I was willing to take a chance on him, work with him, and respect his privacy if he could give me a reference. Someone to vouch for his work and say that they had worked with him well and more than once.”

Juno made himself hold her eye with his own, refusing to flinch or give away more than he had already.

“He was happy to give me your name. Happy to point me in your direction, happy to miss his flight to Mars and meet us elsewhere, just not there. Happy work with us, for a short time. To sell us back the Ruby. And furious to the point of walking out on me, a living legend if I do say so myself, when I informed him that he would be working with you again.”

Juno heard himself make noise like a kicked dog and took another drink to try and cover it. “He left?”

He sounded small even to his own ears.

How small of a margin had Juno missed him?

If he’d healed just a little bit faster. 

If he’d made up his mind a little sooner....

“You love him,” Buddy stated, and Juno wondered if he should be thankful she didn’t try and word it like a question, when it so obviously wasn’t.

Vespa scoffed, but she didn’t say anything, arms crossed over her chest and trying to wait Juno out; waiting for him to admit fault, like she always was.

He felt his lips go tight, pressing together to try and hold on to some shred of control even as his eye went hot with tears he refused to let fall, felt his throat locking around a flood of words that would be no good here. 

Juno fell in love with Peter Nureyev in a torture chamber miles below the surface of Mars. It was the single most honest emotion beyond outrage he had felt in so long, and it scared him more than he could ever put into words. Peter gave him his name, his past, his pain, and his love and Juno repaid him by running shit-scared out the door as soon as he could. 

“Yes,” he slumped in his chair, looking away from the two women across from him, one with a soft sadness in her single visible eye and one with barely restrained disgust, pity or both. “Yeah.”

For all the good it would ever do him. 

Dispite evidence to the contrary, Juno wasn’t stupid. Leaving Mars on a flight of fancy with the man who loved him wouldn’t have fixed anything, because the Juno who left that tomb was more shattered glass than man, jagged pieces ill fit together. Just three traumas in a trenchcoat - that was Juno Steel. He would have hurt Peter anyway. 

But he’s kept a light burning in his heart for the man for a year, and it’s not going out anytime soon. Not when he couldn’t lose himself in alcohol or a cause or a case or another person. 

“And you intend to keep looking for him?”

“I dunno, did you intend to sit in an irradiated tower every night for two years or did it just kind of happen because you couldn’t leave well enough alone?” Juno snarked before he could think better of it, hurt and aching and wanting to lash out. He curled in on himself, still refusing to look anywhere near Buddy. “That wasn’t - I didn’t - I...I just have to make sure he’s okay. I have to talk to him again. And if I need to tear apart every fake name he has ever made to find him, I will, and if I’m doing it of my off hours I really don’t see how it’s any of your-”

“Juno.”

His teeth came together with such force he felt it in his temples, and it was only after he shut up he became aware of how heated his tone had become, how harshly he was breathing.

“Do you know why I took a chance on a nameless thief who wore the name Peter Ransom?”

He didn’t, but if he knew Buddy at all, he knew she would tell him.

“Beyond his obvious talent, Pete was rather...directionless when I found him. He clearly knew me, and well, who doesn’t, but more than that he was eager to work with me. Eager to prove himself -- eager for a payday. I believe him to be a man at a crossroads in his life, pulled in two opposite directions at once and completely unsure which way to go. He’s got debts, Juno. And large ones if I had to guess. But he’s also got a beating heart and a passion for life. He wants a cause and I was prepared to give him one. I even think he would have accepted.”

“Fat chance.”

“Hush, Vespa dear, you may be the smarter of us, but I am the better judge of character.”

Juno forced his jaw to unclench. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, Bud.”

His list of Nureyev’s possible aliases was longer than his arm and nestled into every nook and cranny the galaxy had to offer: An Outer Rim dignitary. The heir to a shipping conglomerate. A weasley middle-man for a crime family. A Dark Matters agent. A fixer. A gambler with too much fortune and not enough sense. 

None of them seemed to have any connection to each other. Even their accounts were cleaned out and transferred through shell corp after shell corp until the trail got too muddy to follow. 

“I’m telling you I am going to help you.”

“Buddy!”

It was Juno’s turn to scoff. “How? I have the best hacker in the galaxy looking through every file we can lay hands on and still, the only thing I’ve managed to find is dead ends and...” 

He cut himself off, thinking about the ball. Making nice with an empty headed heiress by telling her about Mick’s newest business venture, deciding to have a bit of fun and giving her the investment details while he was at it when he got a whiff of that too familiar cologne. Warm spices from a far off planet. Nothing he’d ever smelled before or since and spending as much time as he dared searching faces in the crowd all for nothing. “You’re good, Bud. You’re a goddamn mastermind and I’m not too proud to say it, but unless he left you a forwarding address, I’m not sure how you could possibly -” 

Wordlessly, Buddy brought out a comm and placed it on the table between them. 

It wasn’t her personal one, but nevertheless it was lit up with the glow of a new message from an unknown sender. 

_I know Atlas Hart wasn’t my best, but if you could tell our dear detective to be a little more careful with how he destroys my work Ms. Aurinko, I would appreciate it. I promise my next name won’t be so easy for him to find.  
Xoxo, Ransom_

“Hugs and kisses?” Juno asked, dryly. 

“We parted amiably enough, for all he was furious with me.”

“With you? But you said -” 

“I said he was angry you were coming aboard, Juno. Not that he was angry with you. Though I am sure he was.”

Slowly, hesitantly, Juno reached out.

“You know this wasn’t meant for me.”

“Yes, well, I’m a generous woman when it comes to my family, darling,” She ignored Vespa’s noise of derision and, with effort, Juno did too. “If Ransom had stuck around maybe he would have found that out. But, as it is, he has given it to me, and it’s my prerogative to do as I like with it.” 

“You want me to drag him back.”

“Call me sentimental, or foolish, call me whatever comes to mind,” Buddy took Vespa’s hand where it rested heavy on her shoulder and brought it close, brushing a kiss over the knuckles. “But the fact of the matter is, I like you Juno. You have a good head on your shoulders, when you deign to use it. It was your performance that convinced me to take a chance on Ransom and if you’re set on finding him, I trust your judgment.”

Juno forced himself to think through the warm glow of pride that sat uncomfortably in his chest at Buddy’s praise. “And having another thief on board...”

“A bonus, of course. But I do love a love story.”

“Buddy,” Vespa tried again, but her rough voice was considerably softened by the way her knuckles rested against Buddy’s plush lower lip. “This is a mistake.”

“Maybe, but I am the Captain, love, and so it’s my mistake to make.”

Juno watched an unspoken conversation pass between them; Buddy - asking for Vespa’s trust and Vespa, helpless, extending it against her better judgment. He allowed himself a second to ache for that same connection of someone holding his hand and saying ‘trust me,’ and miss the ease that came with giving in. 

He took the comms back to room in a daze, reading the short message over and over until he could see the glowing text when he closed his eye. Then he consciously re-routed himself back to Rita’s, where he had been going earlier. 

“Oh, there you are, Boss, I was worried you got lost and then I thought it was weird you’d get lost on a small ship like this, but being fair, it’s not like you ever been on a ship in your life so maybe you did get lost and if you did well, that’s not so bad - did you get the crisps I asked for?”

Rita’s mile-a-minute chatter rushed over him and settled warm over his shoulders like a weighted blanket.

“Something better - I got a new lead.”

“Oh! Boss, you always get me the nicest things, gimme!”

He passed her a hand wipe before he let go of the comms and poured himself into the seat opposite hers, pulling up his own comms and swiping through the magnified text on the screen Rita set up for him. 

(So what if this was the same set up they sold to geriatrics, so what if all the buttons were labelled and the text was enlarged and it had a “Help!” button for when he got frustrated. He could finally go through case files without having to print them off.)

“You know I think it’s real romantic, how dedicated you are to finding Mistah...uh…”

Juno tried not to sound bitter, “Buddy called him Ransom, may as well use that.” Besides, if he didn’t give her something consistent, Rita would try and list every last name they could find, just to be thorough. 

Ransom. Why go back to _that_ alias...Juno blinked, mind catching up, “You really think so, romantic?”

“Well yeah! And this,” she waved the comm unit, pushing it back in Juno’s direction. “this is practically an invitation! Like, ‘oh, I sure hope Mistah Steel doesn’t come and catch me!’ And he called you his dear! Well, he said ‘our’ dear, but dear was a part of it! He’s a thief, ain’t he? And before we left Mars and got a whole new family, your whole thing was catchin’ thieves. Only this time what he stole was your heart and -”

“Rita.”

Hand wipe abandoned, Rita began groping across the table for another bag of snacks with one hand, while the other began typing. “We just gotta find him!”

_“Rita.”_

“What is it, Boss? I'm busy tryin’ to find the love of your life so you can tell him how sorry you are and run away together among the stars as the galaxy’s second most feared couple!”

“Rita do you really thi - wait, _second_ most feared?”

“Yeah, sorry Mistah Steel, but I really don’t think you’re gonna beat Mz. Buddy and Mz. Vespa, they got years and years on you.” 

“Just -” Juno sighed, “tell me, am I doing the right thing, by going after him like this?” 

Rita nodded at the comm, and though he didn’t need to, Juno focused his eye on the message again. “He didn’t say stop, boss. He didn’t even say back off, or, go away, or leave me alone or any of the things he could have said! Mistah Ransom said ‘be more careful.’ You know him best, does that sound like somethin’ he’d say if he wanted you gone?”

“No, no it doesn’t.”

He was angry, sure. He more than had the right to be. But there was something deliberate about the last few names Nureyev took. Like that old folk tale about the magic ball of yarn that unraveled to show the princess the way to her lost love.

Nureyev wasn’t saying no.

It felt more like he was saying, ‘Try harder, I dare you.’

“Then we better get to work! You’re gettin’ real good at figuring out Mistah Ransom’s fake names, but we only got three more months of the best season on Venus for weddings, so-”

“Stop it.”

“I will not.”

Juno turned away to hide a smile, but nudged the last full bag of crisps toward her anyway.

After all, the first rule of thieving said ‘when trouble arises, you disappear.’ If Nureyev really wanted to vanish off the map, go off the grid, leave Juno behind - there was nothing Juno could do to stop him. He was, unfortunately, one of the best thieves who ever lived. That’s why the trail, the message, the reason Buddy still wanted him.

But the thing Rita was most right about was - Nureyev knew Juno almost as well as Juno knew him. Juno’s complete inability to turn down a challenge was what marked their first case together, their first kiss, their first heist and...so on. 

If what Nureyev wanted was a chase, if he wanted Juno to show just how dedicated he was to solving this case, that is exactly what he would get.


End file.
